My Hero!

One of the challenges facing us as small (micro) business owners in a service profession is finding good business role models. It may have become cliched but when you are stumped, it can help to ask WWxD (What Would [insert role model's name here] Do)?

What should you look for in a role model?

They have to do business with values you have or would like to have.

It's fine if they are in the same profession but you can learn a lot from people in different professions as well (though it helps if they are operating in a similar environment to you).

They don't have to be everything you want to be; you can have multiple role models for different aspects of your business.

The better you know them personally, the better a role model they are. Lots of us list Oprah Winfrey as a role model for all the good works she's known for and for her popularity. However, I'm betting that few of you reading this have a good understanding of how her organization works and what it takes for her to do those good works and have that popularity. It's more valuable to have a role model who's more immediate.

I have a few myself.

Kitty Southworth LMT: Kitty is my business partner, friend, and for many years we were each others MTs. I'm impressed by Kitty's natural inclination to work a deal. Her instinct with her business dealings with her clients is "how can we make this work?" and she's as flexible as she can be without losing herself.

Jaime Bernardo LMT: Jaime has a true gift for coming up with new ideas and new endeavors and attracting people to join him. He never seems to sweat the small stuff and seems to walk through his business life with a "hey, it'll all work out" attitude. And it frequently does!

Stephanie Bernardo LAC: Yes, Jaime's wife. She is an acupuncturist with a really solid vision of what she wants to grow, what kind of numbers will help her get there, when she can afford to grow, what kind of people she works best with, etc. Plus, she is a truly gifted acupuncturist.

Margo Bowman, CPA, LMT: First and foremost, Margo is my go-to person for accounting, bookkeeping, and taxes. She is sooooo patient when it comes to teaching MTs about these things because she truly understands how scary it can be for us. She is also beautifully generous with her time and expertise. She is a superb example of the "abundance" mentality.

Adriana DiFranco, copywriter: Adriana is not in the healing arts, she's in advertising. Over the 15 years I've known her, I've seen her throw her creativity into her work and get laid off way too many times because the kind of small companies she likes to work for can be unstable. But every time it happens, she picks herself off, dusts herself (and her resume) off, and keeps on plugging. She's built a pretty good freelance base that has come in handy between gigs. That's resiliance.

Clare Reece-Glore, living-with-dogs coach: Clare owns and operates YAYdog to help people choose well and live well with dogs. This is a second....third...fourth? career for her but dogs have always been a passionate part of her life. I admire her imagination for new business opportunities and her ability to get into the down and dirty of getting her businesses set up, making contacts and building relationships, and seeing connections everywhere she turns. I also am impressed by her ability to recognize an unserved niche -- working with people to integrate dogs into their lives, not just train their dogs to "behave".

These are some of my role models. These are people I go to sometimes and say "help me think this through". Who serves as role models for you as a business owner?

Different Values In Different Rooms?

When I talk about the business of massage, I often talk of a house with two rooms. One room is a massage room. The other is an office. Held together by their common ceiling, floor, and walls they are one house, one home.

And yet.....

We often treat them as two different houses rather than two rooms. We may -- consciously or not -- believe that the standards, values, rules, and priorities we use in one room can't apply to the other room. Many any of us are living with a split personality -- our massage selves and our business selves. This doesn't work very well. Split personalities so rarely do!

What words do you use to describe your values as a massage therapist?

• heart-centered
• well-educated
• wise
• smart
• compassionate
• presence
• intent
• partnership
• more?

What words to you use to describe your values as a business owner?

• tough
• smart
• savvy
• quick
• driven
• focused
• more?

Maybe your two lists line up better than this. If, however, there's not a lot of common terms between the two lists, you've got a problem, you've got a split personality and it will seep into both rooms of your house.

How do you reconcile these two lists? If I said "make the biz list match the massage list", would you think I was crazy? Is that totally impractical?  Can business be done from a heart-centered place? Can it be wise and compassionate? Can it be done with presence and intent? Can it be a partnership with your client?

Not just "yes" but "hell yes!"

If that still seems utterly insane to you, I'm going to ask you to make sure you know exactly what you mean by those words in your "massage" list. Oh, sure, we all know what "heart-centered" means.....don't we? Doesn't it mean being all squishy and warm and easy? Doesn't it mean always putting the client's needs before our own?

If that starts to capture what "heart-centered" means to you, I'm inviting you here and now to write a better, real-world definition of "heart-centered". Be very specific. Ask others to look at it. And do that with all the words in your massage list that you think can never be used on the business owner side.

Do the same thing with the words on your business owner side. Can you be tough in the massage room (I've had to be a few times)? Can I be driven? Is that a good thing? If it isn't, why is it one of your values?

The change of the year is a good time to step back for a moment and re-visit our core values, motivations, and perspectives. Do they still work for us? Is it time to move in a different direction? A time to reconcile things that appear to be in opposition to each other? This is the right time of the year to go in, to go deep, to ruminate.

Want to be part of a conversation about whether the values of these two rooms can be in synch with each other? I'll be giving a free talk (yes, I used an MTs favorite word: free) in January.

Doing Business With A Compassionate Heart

Friday, January 11 2013

PMTI (Washington DC)

6:30 - 8 pm

Share the word. I want to continue this conversation with the healing arts community far and wide.

My Thanks

So, it's Thanksgiving week and we are all encouraged to list our thanks out loud and in a public forum (however did we do this before Facebook?). So, here's mine....

I am grateful that I was dropped into the world of the business of massage. By surprise. And that I didn't land on my head in the process.

About 10 years ago, I was hell-bent to join the teaching staff at my alma mater, the Potomac Massage Training Institute. I kept sending my resume to the Director of Education. She finally called me and said they were looking for someone to teach Business Practices, something I had zero background in.

However, they were desperate (not a lot of other MTs had any background in this either). I thought "well, what the heck, I can learn just about anything if I have to". So she handed me the previous instructor's notes and the COMTA requirements and said "good luck".

I have never worked so hard to learn something so I could teach it, ever. And discovered I enjoyed it immensely. I found it fascinating and challenging and darned useful. I also discovered I have a gift for making the complicated comprehensible and for encouraging people to not be afraid.

Fast forward 10 years....I taught Business Practices for several years. I've developed my own continuing ed in business topics and have even started a company to offer this continuing ed to the larger MT community.

Oh, yeah, and I write a business blog, which forces me to think of something new to say about business at least once a week.

Now that I think about it, I landed in my first profession -- technical writing -- much the same way. I was just out of college with a newly-minted journalism degree. I wanted a writing job. A friend said "I know a company who needs writers to write about computer stuff". I explained that I knew zero about computers. He said the company didn't care, figuring it was easier to teach writers about computers than to teach techies how to write.

I needed a job. I figured this "technical writing" stuff could hold me over for a year or two till I found the job I really wanted. I said "ok". Twenty satisfying years later, I left that field for massage therapy.

Lesson(s)?

The best adventures are often not in the direction you thought you were going.

Be willing to try (which also means being willing to fail).

Trust your ability to make the best of these "detours". They may just end up being your new path.

3 Steps *Before* You Start "Marketing"

Many of us don't feel fully equipped to "market" our practice. We don't know how, we're not sure what will work, everyone has an opinion on what you must do but it all seems like so [bleeping] much work!

Yet, we have to do something. We're a business, we need clients, the answer is this beast called "marketing".

Stop! Picking your marketing methods is actually step #4. Have you done steps #1 - #3? If not, you aren't choosing as wisely as you could.

Step 1:  Understand Yourself

It's so tempting to "hide" behind massage when putting your practice out there. What you're offering is massage, so you talk about massage -- techniques, modalities, education, etc. However, the odds are that your practice is not much different from another MTs practice. There are only so many techniques, modalities, education, etc.

What your (potential) client is buying is ... you. Your outlook, your perspective, your motivation, what inspires you, why you do what you do. Why would you be more attractive to a potential client than the massage therapist down the street (who probably has a similar education and list of modalities)? Take a moment (or week or month) to reflect on you. Think about how you communicate that.

Step 2: Understand Your (potential) Client

When I talk to MTs about their "target market" (a common business-y word), they often say "I'll massage anyone!" That's not a helpful answer. I don't want to know who you'd be willing to massage. I want to know what kind of person really wants to receive massage from you.

Who "fits" you best? What kind of person? Age? Where do they live? Have they had massage before? Why? How do they feel about their body, health, complementary therapies, and massage therapy? How did they find you? What made "massage" pop into their head? What is about them that would make your practice, in particular, attractive to them? Where do they get their information about health and body? Who do they respect? Who do they trust?

When you understand them better, you'll do a better job of reaching out to them (which is all that marketing really is).

Note: This step is a whole lot easier to do when you've been in practice for at least a year or two. You can look back at the clients you've had the best connection with. If you are just starting out, you'll be guessing to a much greater extent. That's OK, running a business always involves guess work.

Step 3:  Understand What You're Selling

Well, this is easy, right? You're selling "massage therapy". Sorry, nope.

People don't buy services, they buy results. Whether it's the pleasure of a clean house, the usefulness of having a working washing machine, or the relief of a shoulder that rotates all the way around, they are more motivated by what they believe they will be/have after their massage.

Will they be better equipped to handle the stressors of the day? Will they experience a better night's sleep? Will they be able move without back pain? Will they be able to run faster? Will they have a few days without the symptoms of their chronic disease? Will they be taller and thinner?? Will they feel better about themselves?

We have to be careful about making promises we can't guarantee. But you are selling an experience and some kind of result is implied. What results are you, specifically, selling?

Step 4: Choose Your Marketing Tools

NOW you're ready to invite the world to your table.

Daunted? Feeling a little helpless? Do these 3 steps look like a giant stone wall between you and the clients you want to attract? I've got a recommendation:  Marketing for Hippies.

Tad Hargrave has some very wise things to say about understanding your self, your product, and your clients. Best of all, he talks in a way we MTs can understand. He uses interesting analogies. He understands that the vast majority of us didn't enter this field for the Big Bucks, we are driven by a passion for the work.

In particular, I found the following articles very helpful in trying to answer these very same questions for myself:

The Results They Crave
Marketing Is Like Making Tea
We Might Be A Fit If...
Island A: The Painful Symptom (more about thinking about "results")
Three Foundations of a Thriving Business

Should You Lower Your Rates?

I recently met a young woman who is starting up her practice and struggling. She asked if I thought she should lower the price of her massage to attract clients.

My advice? No.

It's so tempting. Entice them in with lower rates; become sort of the "Black Friday" massage therapist. I think you should avoid it, though, and here's my thinking:

• You don't want to become the "cheap" massage therapist. You attract more clients who will only stay with you as long as you're the cheap option. Too many will value the $ signs more than the actual benefit. It also severely hampers you -- logistically and emotionally -- when it's time to raise your rates.

• Unless your rates are significantly higher than the going rate for your area, then prices aren't keeping clients away. Other MTs can attract them at full price; you can too (eventually).

• It's also depressing to feel that the only way people want to experience your work is if it's cheap. You know you're worth more, why don't they?

• How low can you go? If you drop your prices 5% and you don't get new clients, will you drop it 10%, 15%, 20%? How low will you go?

• Focusing on prices keeps you from focusing on more productive efforts, like marketing.

Speaking of which, there are some ways to lower your rates and make it productive:

• Lower your rates for a specific population that you want to attract. For example, how about reducing the cost of massage as a pregnant woman moves through her pregnancy? 100% in 1st trimester, 90% in second trimester, and 80% in the 3rd trimester. Or offer a discount for anyone who lives in a certain zip code.

• Offer add-ons rather than discounts. For example, get a 90-minute massage for the price of a one-hour massage.

• Offer discounts for getting more massage. For example, after every 3rd massage they get a 1/2 price massage.

• Consider making special offers and discounts time-restricted. For example, offer a 13% discount for the first 6 weeks of 2013. Get a 90-minute massage for the price of a 60-minute massage for the last 6 weeks of the year. Give a 50% discount to returning veterans for one year after they get back. Think especially about the times when your schedule is historically thin.

If you're going to use price to attract clients, do it strategically and and in a way that boosts key elements of your business.

Who's Making How Much Where (or Location, Location, Location)

The "going price" for a massage varies wildly across the country. Based on a recent post on the Massage Therapists group on Facebook, here's a run-down for your viewing pleasure. Remember that even within a single town, the prices will vary from therapist to therapist.

Bremerton, WA: $50
Port Huron, MI: $50
central Kansas: $50
Seneca, KS: $55

western NC: $60
Rhode Island: $60
Salt Lake City, UT: $60
southern Illinois: $60
Idaho Falls, ID: $60
Tonawanda, NY: $60
Niceville, FL:  $65
Atlanta, GA: $65

South Bend, IN: $70
St. Louis, MO: $70
Flushing, MI:  $70
Bradenton, FL: $70
Lockport, NY: $75
Naperville, IL: $75
Lacey, WA: $75

Phoenixville, PA: $80
Ely, MN:  $80
Washington, DC: $85

Chicago, IL:  $90
south Florida: $90
San Diego, CA:  $90
Wisconsin Dells, WI:  $95

Atlanta, GA:  $100
NY NY:  $100
Key West, FL:  $125

A Little Truth-Telling

I laid in bed Tuesday night having a major pity party. Husband out of town. Hurricane. Hospitalization for appendicitis (with surgery yet to come). A friend who's let me down. Mom doing poorly and I can't help her.

A pathetic massage practice.

It's depressing. I've done everything I can think of and everything I've been advised to do and after more than a year of hard work, it's still an excellent week if I get four (4!) bookings.

If it weren't for my husband (and how many of us would be screwed without a partner with a steady income?), I'd be on welfare. In the past 12 months, I've averaged $1,000 per month. That's enough for food or housing but not both.

And I write a freakin' business blog....

It's hard to write this. It's hard to admit how poorly I'm doing, financially, as a massage therapist. Especially since every week I try to impart some useful wisdom or insights into the business of massage. My husband keeps saying "it's a really tough time to be a small business". It is, of course, complicated by closing my practice for a year so we could live in Australia. I'm, effectively, starting over.

But, wow, it's demoralizing. I often feel like a failure. If I'm doing just a little poorly physically, it's darned hard to convince myself to drive up to the gym where I work two days a week (I work out of my home the rest of the time) just in case someone wants massage (they tend to book same day rather than in advance).

Why am I sharing my tale o' woe here? Because I don't want to deceive you even a little bit. I don't want to give you the impression that I Know Everything and I've Got Everything Under Control. Because, wow, I don't. I will still write about business from the best I've learned but even knowing a lot of great stuff doesn't guarantee financial success.

If you're having a hard time, you are not alone. I'm with you.